Mormon Civil War

In this presentation from the recent 2025 Sunstone UK symposium I review my version of the journey hundreds of thousands of Latter-day Saints have walked from passionate enthusiasm for this religion to astonished disillusionment, yet still not able to entirely walk away. I talk about some of the amazing, forward thinking and potentially world changing yet simple ideas in the best of Mormon thought, with a particular focus on the superstar LDS intellectuals who I have only recently discovered were instrumental in personally converting and mentoring my LDS ancestors, starting exactly a century ago with the conversion of my Great Grandmother Jeannie Bleakley by James Talmage in 1926. 

They embedding a religious worldview in my family culture that many of us who resonate with the best bits of Mormonism mourn for as we watch the beating heart of this potential world religion leave the dying institutional Church as it bleeds out… and then discover that it continues to live on in the thriving online and personal communities of the LDS Church in Exile. 

As always, my message is that you were never stupid to have loved this religion and its remarkable potential, and you are not stupid to be disappointed and exasperated at how badly it has screwed up, becoming everything it taught us in Primary and Seminary to avoid and oppose.

After 5 years of the Mormon Civil War podcast, I team up with Gene Judson and Randy Watts of Latter Daily Digest to make infallible prophecies about how the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will continue to change over the next 5 years.

Peter, Paul and Mormonism – The 12 Days of Christmas Toscano Dialogues

In this final conversation Paul shares his conclusions about the Godhead that the text of the Book of Mormon actually describes, and it’s nothing like the ‘Fullness of the Gospel’ deity the LDS Church thinks it is telling us to believe in.  We also talk about the what a final judgement may involve when administered by a merciful deity who is rooting for us to learn and grow and become like them. 

Peter, Paul and Mormonism – The 12 Days of Christmas Toscano Dialogues

In this penultimate episode we try to make some sense of 5 of the biggest conundrums in Mormon theology:  

1 - How is God male and female?

2 - Who actually is Jehovah in the Temple Endowment?

3 - Disentangling who is what in the several different Mormon Godheads

4 - Who exactly is who in the world planning scene in the Book of Abraham?

5 - The nature of the Atonement of Christ.  

Mormon Doctrines can be a lot wilder than even I imagined. And along the way Paul says something so profound and comforting I have already made a meme of it.

Peter, Paul and Mormonism – The 12 Days of Christmas Toscano Dialogues

As we continue to ponderize how to integrate the religiously ideal with the real in our normal lives, Paul and I discuss what it means to base a religion on the glory described in Mormon scriptures of truth, light and freedom to think for yourself rather than Lucifer’s religion of militaristic acclaim for conquering and controlling other people. What a Mormonism of open minded curiosity and respect for science blesses you with compared to the miserable and lonely certainties of judgmental fundamentalism, even if it seems less secure.  

Peter, Paul and Mormonism – The 12 Days of Christmas Toscano Dialogues

In this meaty episode we explore all kinds of aspects of what taking the LDS temple endowment’s promises seriously can unlock for autonomous, ordained men and women empowered to free themselves from authoritarian control by General Authorities and instead replace them as the democratic, equal ‘Quorum of the Anointed’ Joseph Smith originally established. We reflect on what Community of Christ has pioneered in making Common Consent actually work as a leadership and decision-making philosophy.  What President Russell M. Nelson said when challenged by journalists to have more inclusive leadership of the Church, and what they did to heroic Elder Ronald E. Poelman of the Seventy when he dared to teach this model of mature autonomy separating the institutional Church from the true Gospel in General Conference in actual 1984.  You couldn’t make it up. 

Peter, Paul and Mormonism – The 12 Days of Christmas Toscano Dialogues

In the first of a 2-parter we start to learn what Paul Toscano means by ‘Chapel Priesthoods’ and ‘Temple Priesthoods’.  After a much more sophisticated beginning, how did the LDS leaders establish a male-only, correlated bureaucracy that tightly controls every expression of priesthood authority and blessing?

And is there any way for an asphyxiating Church, and particularly women, to escape its iron grip?

Peter, Paul and Mormonism – The 12 Days of Christmas Toscano Dialogues

How do you solve a problem like Joseph Smith?  Can a master manipulator, con artist, skilful storyteller, sexual predator, financial fraudster, and destroyer of printing presses also be a prophet of God?  The Apologists for the LDS Church have had to concede enormous amounts of territory in recent decades to acknowledge his many flaws, but is their rather weak pleading to ‘give Brother Joseph a break’ by saying we cannot know his true motivations, and that ‘the past is a foreign country, they do things differently there’, really a good enough excuse?  Surely God could have chosen someone much less conflicted and controversial than HIM for such an important job?  Joseph was more successful than many religious founders, but he also sowed the landmines of Mormonism’s failure to become a world religion from the start.  …BUT… he also gave us scriptures about change, accountability and democracy that could have neutralised a lot of that damage if his successors had applied them. 

We grapple with it all… and we just about save ourselves from being blood-atoned by Magnificent Maven and the Feminist Mormon Housewives. 

Peter, Paul and Mormonism – The 12 Days of Christmas Toscano Dialogues

In this episode we wrestle with the conflicting qualities required of the leaders of a religion.  Ideally they need to balance a mystical sensitivity for the divine, a calling to challenge society to do better and champion the interests of the poor and oppressed as social justice warriors, a duty to protect and pass on sacred rituals, and the ability to manage practical day to day administrative and financial matters.  Is it possible for anyone to have all these skills?  How have we ended up with a leadership oligarchy that only seems to care about being, and promoting, managers, yet isn’t even very competent at management?  

Is it their fault?  Or simply inevitable when the Common Consent checks and balances on power commanded by the Church’s constitution in the Doctrine and Covenants have been abandoned so, as warned in those scriptures, the LDS General Authorities have mostly become absolutely corrupted by absolute power with no accountability?  Have any real prophets made it to the top of this system to give us hope?  How can we do better?

Peter, Paul and Mormonism – The 12 Days of Christmas Toscano Dialogues

In this episode we dive into the challenges and frustrations of interacting with a religious text.  

If it is not accurate, literal history, why should we still bother with the Book of Mormon as metaphorically or religiously useful literature? After all, we can learn dozens of profoundly helpful and ‘true’ life lessons about self-sacrifice, love, courage, compassion, salvation, ethical complexity and what to do with power from The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Shakespeare, The Handmaid’s Tale, Battlestar Galactica or Terry Pratchett’s Discworld Novels.  And those are much more beautifully written and fun to follow than most of the Mormon scriptures.